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Absent
Even missing the mass of a hole torn in its breastplate, the MJOLNIR suit was heavy enough to anchor the corpse to the floor as the Pelican rattled free of Stavros' atmosphere. Glowing in the dim light of the troop compartment, the pristine white of its titanium plates silhouetted the lithe figure they'd failed to protect from dexterous hands to athletic legs, locked forever in rigor mortis. Everywhere but the chest, where carbon blackened the twisted steel around a crater of roasted flesh, as if a hot scoop had gouged out the torso. The nightmare of viscera was a grotesque contrast to its shaped titanium frame, and to the unmarred, pasty skin of the face a helmet—since removed—had shielded in the moment of her death. The fringe of her snowy, close-cropped hair hung almost low enough to veil the lidded eyes, meshed black lashes tying them ever closed. Her wan lips had often pursed when they'd called her Snow White. Their contrast with her gruesome wound could only further grieve the boy who'd loved her, by her side in one of the jumpseats along the Pelican's wall, entwining the memory of her perfect face with mortal disfigurement. He was sitting hunched with her helmet on his knees, the tears he'd poured over its silver visor no more than salt trails now. Kodiak sat across in the narrow compartment, shaking with the Pelican's quakes. Everything they'd said in training ran circles in his head. Spartans never died. Spartans never died. So what the hell was this? He was their team leader. He was responsible. And he'd been two klicks away when two of his team had... Dyne looked up at last as the Pelican's ride smoothed out into vacuum. Even in the dark, Kodiak's augmented eyes could make out the swell of his best friend's eyelids, flush from swollen tear ducts. Grief had stripped the constant cheer from his face. "What happens now?" he asked, as if depending on the answer for a blueprint to his life from then on. Kodiak was lost for even an adequate response. "I don't know." Dyne's gaze dropped again to the mirrored visor. "They're going to want her back." "There's no family to return her body to." he objected. "Even if there were, S-III is still classified. We'll probably oversee the burial ourselves once—" "I'm talking about Amber." He'd known. Machete was a four-man Fireteam, and only three were coming back. Only two alive—because of the fourth. But with Morgan's body on the deck between them, he didn't want to think about what would come next. He couldn't stand to. When he didn't answer, Dyne's inflamed eyes fell back to Morgan's cold features. "We lost a friend today. I know it's her fault, but... I don't want to lose another." Kodiak didn't either. But whatever they wanted, he couldn't see a way it wouldn't end up happening. ---- Erin Coney's night had unwound so interminably even the patter of her shoes became a soft rhythm, lulling her eyelids lower as she paced the empty corridor. Catching them in the act, she trained her eyes on the next ceiling light she passed to burn the instinctual association with day and waking into her mind. Too much could fall behind if she allowed herself to be tired, let alone take a moment for actual rest. As soon as the shock of the Stavros op going wrong had worn off, she'd been running ragged. As Fireteam Machete's handler, there had been so much to debrief, document, file, and verify for the inevitable investigation. And as the agent who'd intervened and interfered in the military bureaucracy on Machete's behalf for years, so much more of it needed editing, erasing, replacing, and tying up to fit a cover story she invented on the spot, all without anyone noticing, before the investigation began. Neither she nor the young Spartans of Machete were supposed to be involved with the UNSC Infinity and its operations⁠; officially, they weren't supposed to be anywhere at all. As members of Gamma Company, the last class of Spartans illicitly recruited as children by the UNSC, Machete should all have been retired, living out full lives to make up for the terrible mistake committed in taking them—or secretly under ONI's direct command, carrying out exactly the sort of operations so many resources had been spent preparing them for on behalf of a department too powerful and inscrutable to hold accountable. Their involvement in a mission entailing a Spartan casualty—one inflicted by another Spartan, no less—risked shedding light on figures who very much disliked their dark disturbed. And as for Erin...